Cool Critters: Large, striking sea duck makes a splash near Pasco

You never forget your first white-winged scoter, a big black sea duck with a white curve above each eye resembling the Nike Swoosh logo.

Especially if your first scoter is bobbing along the Columbia River east of Pasco.

The white-winged scoter is a diving duck that spends summers in the northern boreal and subarctic regions of Alaska and Canada before migrating south to foamy waters off the Pacific Coast, including the Puget Sound, according the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

On Oct. 22, a birder spotted one along the Columbia River at McNary National Wildlife Preserve and recorded the sighting on eBird.

Vic Hubbard, a recreational bird photographer who lives near Pasco, learned of the sighting. On Oct. 26, he set out to see if he could spot the unusual duck from his kayak. Acting on a fresh tip from a fellow birder, he paddled north from where the duck was seen four days earlier.

Lo and behold. Gliding quietly on the water was a velvety-black duck larger than a mallard. It had white-feathered patches on its wings, a cartoonish orangish-red bill and white swooshes extending from its ghostly-gray eyes.

Hubbard drew his kayak up as close as possible without harassing it, aimed his camera and shot some photographs – one of which is featured in today’s column.

“Happy to get a lifer this morning,” he wrote in a Facebook post later that day. (For those who may not know, the term ‘lifer’ is birdspeak for when a person sees and identifies a bird species for the first time in their life).

“I got lucky,” Hubbard said in an interview, adding that he logged the unusual sighting on his “life list” of new bird species observed since he began tracking them five years ago.

“To claim a bird for my life list, I have to have an identifiable photo of it,” he explained. “The white-winged scoter was my 647th bird.”

The fact that this lifer bird showed up in the southeastern part of the state is noteworthy for several reasons.

For one, the white-winged scoter is no longer common in Washington state, according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. Due largely to coastal development, the birds’ numbers “have undergone significant population declines on Puget Sound where it winters,” WDFW states in its State Wildlife Action Plan. Consequently, the agency has listed the bird as a Species of Greatest Conservation Need.

Also, while it is not unusual for southbound scoters to stop and refuel in fresh-water bodies as they make their way to the Pacific Coast, this one was pretty far inland, said Kyle Spragens, WDFW waterfowl manager.

“It happens, but it’s definitely odd,” he said.

And one more thing. White-winged scoters typically migrate in small groups, but this one was a loner.

Spragens has a theory. Several days before the bird was first spotted, a storm system began moving through parts of the Pacific Northwest, pummeling western Washington with strong winds and rain.

“Bad weather may have forced the bird to skirt the edge of the storm by veering off its migratory course and landing on the river at the wildlife preserve,” said Spragens. There, it could forage on fresh-water clams, crawdads and snails. “It’s not a bad place for a white-winged scoter to end up,” he added.

The last sighting of the duck was recorded on eBird on Monday. It is hard to know for certain what drove the white-winged scoter wayward, Spragens said. Was it the weather? A faulty GPS? An independent thinker exploring new habitats?

Or, was it simply because birds, like humans, sometimes make wrong turns.